Last week n2n attended a course from Speed Thinking; a new business concept that teaches companies methods of thinking and idea generation (definitely not one of those airy brainstorm training sessions that can never be applied to the real world).

In a recent blog post, founder Dr Ken Hudson noted that, in a broadband-based world, we may need to start thinking in a different way. But is faster thinking really the answer? Read the rest of this entry »

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I don’t know whether you have seen the story doing the rounds on PR and media sites this week.

The Council to Homeless Persons distributed a news release to a daily commuter publication, MX via an online news wire service. The commuter publication was one of many on a list of metropolitan news outlets that received the release. The news release, distributed on Thursday, was under embargo until the following Wednesday.

The email doing the rounds details how MX broke the embargo and ran a front page story based on the release on Friday afternoon.

There are a couple of things that I find particularly amusing about the email and the Council to Homeless Persons’ response:

1.       They issued an embargoed release over a news wire service

2.       The story was embargoed for more than a week

3.       They complained that the embargo was broken even though it appears that nobody ever had the chance to agree to it in the first place

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We’ve been asked by one of our clients to sit on the evaluation panel as they select a new advertising agency and I’ve had the pleasure of listening to various different pitches. Sitting on the other side of table for a change has been great learning in terms of getting exposure to the way other agencies pitch, but it’s also been interesting for a number of other reasons.

Firstly, it’s fantastic that PR is considered so important and central to raising this client’s brand awareness.   For too long PR has often been viewed as the poor relation to advertising and is forced to feed off the budgetary scraps that are left over once the ad guys have had their fill. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last night n2n won a “PRIA Award for Excellence” for Business to Business communications for its campaign to promote Sun Microsystems green IT offerings.  n2n was awarded the award against seven other finalists.

The judges said the campaign demonstrated “very thorough research”, had a “comprehensive strategy” and that it was “great to see a differentiated approach for different audiences.”    The campaign, which spanned electronic communications (eg blogs, email, podcasts) events and media relations, exceeded the objectives.  As a result, Sun was publicly recognised as a leader by industry influencers.   

Sun’s staff and customer perceptions were positively influenced and a number of major deals were directly linked to the awareness generated by the campaign. Thanks to Sun Microsystems for their early commitment to green computing which gave us great material to work with. 

Sun is a partner in the true sense of the word – they involve us as part of their team in everything from planning to celebrating success.  And their willingness to support strategic campaigns makes it a privilege to be their partner.Well done to the n2n team who work with Sun Microsystems.  It was their clever strategy, energy and flawless execution that secured the PR award.

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Google recently launched a new service asking for users to write what it calls knols, “authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects.”   Sounds familiar.  With knolls joining wikis, blogs and the like as a medium for anyone to at least act like an authority on a subject, it’s beginning to blur the lines even more between fact and (not necessarily informed) opinion on the web.   

We’ve had to take it for granted that what we’re told is fact long before the internet, but when you had a small selection of newspapers and TV channels to chose from it was easy to make a call on which ones were the most authoritative and trustworthy.  The web has long since changed all that and the growth of social networking and Generation Y’s penchant for social commentary online means the waters are likely to be further muddied. I think though that the winners of this confusion are likely to be those outlets that have built up a level of trust and credibility – i.e. the journalists and more traditional outlets.  Certainly the blogs that I take most notice of, with a couple of notable exceptions, are those written by journalists I know or respect.  And it’s likely that the print media and journalists are a better home for informed opinion and analysis because it comes with an established level of trust and credibility. 

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A quote from Tim Hughes, Executive Chairman of the Photon Group, in the Australian Financial Review caught my eye today. He said, “One-way forms of communication using TV, radio and newspapers will always have their place, but in this new consumer-empowered world, they are much less relevant.  Communications is now two-way.” 

Funny thing is if you are a PR person, communications has always been two-way.   Far too long ago I recall my first year PR lecturer defining PR as “the two way communication between an organisation and its publics.” The difference now is that online and social media has caught the attention of traditional marketers and advertising executives and forced them to re-define their business according to a two-way model.  Read the rest of this entry »

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As a tech PR, if you don’t know about Technorati, TechCrunch, Digg and del.icio.us – chances are you are not informed enough to craft comprehensive client strategies.

PRs today deal with a new landscape of influencers beyond our traditional tech journalists and analysts.

With such a large percentage of business and consumer IT buying decisions starting on the Web, online represents a powerful medium that can be leveraged in many ways.

Search Engines have radically altered the PR landscape.  We have some clients in the B2B space generating as much as 80 per cent of their sales funnel through organic search-initiated enquiries. Read the rest of this entry »

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The other day I sat in an “all agency” briefing alongside my client’s ad agency, media buyer and brand consultants. 

When it came to handling the web redesign, I asked, “are we the only agency that wants to be involved in the new site?”   Unsurprisingly, the response was a unanimous “no”. 

How does a client decide which of their “trusted advisors” will do the best job on their web site content? Read the rest of this entry »